Vestager to fine 3 lenders for euro-rate rigging

HSBC, JPMorgan and Crédit Agricole to be penalized over Euribor scandal.

The EU will hit three major banks with multi-million euro fines Wednesday for rigging a key euro benchmark borrowing rate, Euribor.

EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager will order HSBC, JPMorgan and Crédit Agricole to pay fines ranging from tens of millions of euros to the low hundreds of millions, according to the Financial Times.

The three banking giants were charged with rigging the Euro Interbank Offered Rate (Euribor) interest rate benchmark in 2013 when several other major lenders — Deutsche Bank, Société Générale and Royal Bank of Scotland — were fined a total of almost €1 billion. But HSBC, JPMorgan and Crédit Agricole denied any wrongdoing, resulting in a further investigation carried out by the Commission’s antitrust team.

The Commission’s investigation centers on concerns that the banks manipulated the pricing of interest rate derivatives — financial products used by banks to manage risks associated with interest rate fluctuations.